NPR: Crack! Smack! Conk!: Do Home Runs Make Boring Baseball?

Desmond Doomsday approaches!

It’s an argument baseball fans have been having ... well, forever: Home Runs, Yay versus Home Runs, Boo. They’ll dress it up more than that, but that’s all it is.

Arguments in favor: a towering home run is an awfully impressive achievement, it sounds great and looks awesome (if you’ve never heard a really big hit in person, it’s weird how loud it is), and that it’s a display of raw power that baseball doesn’t otherwise necessarily offer. Moreover, in special circumstances, it can score a bunch of runs at once and hugely affect the course of the game. After all, major league teams score an average of four or five runs per game; the right kind of home run can score four in one play. If football had a 21-point play, people would get pretty excited about it, even if it didn’t happen often. Moreover, it’s efficient. There’s not a guy who hits a single who wouldn’t be better off, you know, hitting a home run.

Arguments against: It’s boring. Nothing really happens. The ball isn’t even in play. No sport should expect people to get overly excited about anything with “trotting” in it, unless it’s dressage. And perhaps even then, you know? Many home runs aren’t that much more exciting to look at than fly outs. In fact, many of them almost are fly outs. Some of them would be fly outs if they were in a different ball park. And, of course, to some people, they’re unromantic and don’t focus on the fundamentals and so forth.